Cassandra was positively ordered to leave his sight when she finished reporting about the found corpse. An unbelievable act, when the officer had spoken so much about holding together only moments before. The woman was shocked at the lack of decency on the man’s part, the lack of composure on the officer’s face had been something of obvious expression.
Not that she had anything to worry about now. The corpse had been plaguing the back of the woman’s head for a few hours now, Cassandra not too sure what exactly she needed to do about it. From a single side of the experience, it was just a screwed up piece of biological experimentation. Sure, it wasn't that common to see a human skull fused to an animal, yet it wasn't as if it happened before. Humanity was apt on sticking pieces together from different species, including those that shouldn't exactly have fit. Humans and cats, seals and lions, and what other crazy stuff one could think of had already been tried in full.
But… there was rarely anything but those fusings of flesh that were notable with the corpses. Yet the one that Cassandra had found in the forest was anything but just that, having excluded the chemical composition that had caused her so much anxiety. That extrusion alone was enough to call in specialists. The fact that it was stuck to a creature's flesh made it all the worse. It was a weaponization.
In a way, it did make sense that Grunwald had been so hasty about getting her out of sight. The man likely needed to report it as early as possible, the hours where it had been delayed likely the difference between life and death. At least, that’s how Cassandra guessed the man had seen it. There really wasn't any other excuse for that haunted expression she had seen.
With the fact that she had been thrown away so quickly, the woman was unsure of what to really do. There were thoughts about going back to her room and trying to sleep, yet… she already knew that would be impossible for the next hour at the minimum. Her mind had been activated again, and it wasn't close to willing to rest again.
So… what to do? She had no reason to restart her duties, and it wasn't like there had been any emergency calls into the station in the last hour. The city was somehow at peace, no matter how much chaos Cassandra felt it should have been in.
She could go to the room and write the reports of the day, yet that idea was scrapped almost immediately. The important details had already been relayed, so the reason for having it out on the same day was just about muted. Cassandra had no real reason to be motivated about the subject.
Which left her with only one real thing to do. It was a technique she had learned from her short experience with working in an office. Cassandra would make her problem somebody else’s problem. And since Grunwald was out doing important reports and Jared was out sleeping for the next twelve hours, there was only one real candidate for the position.
Unfortunately, Cassandra had more trouble than she wanted, when it came to finding this candidate. During her initially showing off the station, Jared had shown her all the rooms that the man had personally thought she would ever have a use for. These were things like meeting rooms, the kitchen, all the restrooms in the entire station, and where emergency janitorial supplies were being kept. Things like that. Things designed for human interaction.
Yet there were things out of that realm, locations in the building that hadn't been designed with human interaction in mind. Jared had most likely known exactly where these were, yet had never thought that Cassandra would need the same information. That man was wrong, and the woman was suffering because of those choices.
Just where was Jules hiding? Oh, she knew exactly where the scrap-bucket was hiding. It was in the room in the cellar that had been designed for the charging and repairing of any automations that came to the station. Cassandra knew that much.
However, just how was one supposed to get to this lower floor of the building? Cassandra had never actually been on more than the first and second floors. Her mental map of the place was limited to those two floors, having never seen a single staircase leading downstairs.
It was as if the station had done everything it could to make sure it was as hard as possible to get down there. The map of the building was little help. She wanted to know where the stairs were, and the design obliged her every word. It was just never down.
How many stair-cases had she been around in the last ten minutes? Cassandra didn't bother remembering, her only memory surrounding it being the ancient curses she was splattering onto the ground. It was words she had learned earlier in her life, whenever one of the older folks would stub their toes. She didn't really know why, yet those cutting sentences always stuck with her.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
They just showed frustration so well. The pain could be felt with every word, and it showed off exactly what Cassandra felt was worthy of the situation. Just why had anybody done this to her? Why had anybody thought it was such a good idea to hide a basement of all things? The medical room was understandable. Keep the wounded safely for as long as possible. An understandable and honourable goal? Keeping the basement safe, however? That was just pure evil. There was no reason to do it.
Cassandra stopped her relentless search, taking a few deep breaths. She was getting angry again. Her pulse was starting to rise into the hundred and twenties purely due to her frustrations. She needed to be mindful of it all.
…
Okay, searching blindly was clearly not working. So when left with this fact pressed down on her, the woman felt that there was only one real method to use after it. Sending Jules a message, Cassandra requested instructions on how to enter the basement.
The automation was luckily not in the mood to play it all up this time, simply sending her a carefully drawn map of how to get there. Sure, it was drawn with the idea of her starting from her room, but she could still use it well enough. The locations in it were easily recognizable, after all.
The lack of real staircases down seemed extra stupid when the woman finally realised where the only actual way down was when looking away from the back entrance on the outside of the station. When going down from the inside, one would need to go over to the main entrance of the station itself. In the room, a few meters next to it was the staircase, hidden in a corner that nobody ever bothered looking at. There weren't even any cameras pointed that way. That was how little care there was about it.
But, Cassandra was one of the few who did care, to the point where she walked down the poorly cleaned stairs. Dirt could be seen on each step as if the cleaning bots had never been told to sweep the part of the station that didn't contain humans regularly. If that was so, Cassandra was sure to send in a complaint about it, due to the health risk associated with such juvenile behaviour. ‘What couldn't be noticed couldn't be noticed about?’ That was one of the biggest lies she had heard for a long time, and it was as untrue now as the first time it had reached her ears.
When she reached the end of the stairs and the beginning of the lower floor, Cassandra did in a way understand why nobody wanted to be down there. Everything was made of moulded concrete, sharp edges at every corner of the hallway, with the older lamps on the top flickering every few seconds. It was clearly not something that any human would be close to. Even the temperature was terrible. Honestly, just how was it possible to drop ten degrees from going down a single staircase? The heat insulation must have been more than a little advanced.
Or it was the concrete holding it all in. The woman wouldn't be too surprised if that was it, with so much of it. There was enough space in the hallway for an entire bus to drive comfortably inside. Just what was it designed to hold? Cassandra knew it wasn't vehicles, since the garage for them was purely outside. Yet… what else could it have been?
With the place being so big, Cassandra just started walking down the hallway. There was a corner about twenty meters down, allowing the woman the chance of actually getting somewhere. With so much space, there had to be more than empty-
There was more than empty space. There was so much more than empty space. The floor turned slanted, allowing four or five more meters up to the ceiling. Cassandra wasn't sure yet honestly didn't pay too much attention to it. Her eyes were glued to what the wall to the left showed.
The turn at the end of the hallway showed a new room, large and without any obvious end. Or, maybe it had walls at some point, Cassandra just unable to see them due to a large number of bodies in the way. There was a point where the woman thought she had seen Jules, yet as more and more faces that seemed similar to the construct she knew appeared, Cassandra fully understood how large a mistake had been made on her part.
Hanging from the walls, an army of automations were situated systematically in a bunch. They were stacked neatly, with three full levels of them. Each had their eyes closed, looking down from their hanging placement. They looked like blue corpses, ready for harvesting. It looked like something out of a nightmare.
There had to be over a hundred… no, there definitely was over a hundred, nearing the point where Cassandra wouldn't doubt there being double whatever she estimated. Just how was this possible? She had only ever seen two in the same room before. Just…. Why were there so many? How was it possible for there to be so many of them?
Stacked against what Cassandra hoped to be the wall, the woman walked over to one of them. It looked even more dead up close, having no movement at all. It could have been looked at as a weirdly uninformed art sculpture of some kind.
The automations weren't wearing police uniforms, after all, but a white piece of fabric that hid all the bits that people would question too much about. Cassandra was happy about that being there, not wanting to see a whole wall of examples of why designers didn’t need so much detail on their creations.
From her side, past the wall of automations, Cassandra could hear the banging of some kind. There was the bending of metal, the clattering of something hitting the floor, and the sound of somebody muttering swears. The woman initially thought that somebody else had gone down there, somebody who wasn't related to the force. Yet, as her reaction to grabbing her tranquillizer died down, she began to slowly realise who that might have been.
The woman initially tried to go beside the wall of automations, yet found that there was no clear path over to the other side. No openings in the wall beside the constructs either. Another would have perhaps tried to find another way inside, something clearly designed for that specific use. Cassandra didn't want to bother with that, however.
With a starting push, the officer who had too much pride began to push herself between the unactivated constructs. The thickness of the wall was about six automations deep. Not a lot from an outside perspective, but more than challenging from anywhere else. The bodies sat tightly together, yet were similarly more than a little hard to push. They weighed as much as double Cassandra’s own weight each, making it more than a little hard to push two of them to each side every time she wanted to move a single step forward.
Somehow, however, she did actually succeed. It was a silent fight, yet it was similar to a silent win. Nothing really happened when she got to the other side, except for the woman feeling like her back needed to be popped back into place. But that was likely just a joke from her physical side, so the woman paid it no real mind.
Yet, what she finally saw when looking around did remind her of something. A real, god-awful mess, with a crazy maniac sitting right in the middle of it all.